I didn’t watch the Gilda Radner TV-movie last night, as I was forewarned about how heinous it was. But I love Gilda, so I did watch the clip-show at 8:00. Yikes!
FIRST. We do NOT want to see Baba Wawa and Lilly Tomlin and Kermit the fucking Frog go on for ten minutes about how wonderful Gilda Radner was. It’s a clip show: we want to see CLIPS! They never showed a whole sketch, just tiny snippets, because the airtime was taken up with Eugene Levy reminiscing about Gilda singing “Zippity-Doo-Dah.”
SECOND. What the HELL has Steve Martin done to his face? He looks like a startled, elderly Asian woman! Unless he is on some kind of life-sustaining drug, I can only assume he has had a REALLY bad facelift. For some reason, I’d thought better of him . . .
I saw no need to watch the movie. I mean what the hell was ABC thinking (and why was ABC doing this and not NBC)? You don’t put on a clip show demonstrating how truly gifted Gilda was and then follow it with made-for-TV dreck.
And I’ve had that same weird feeling about Steverino’s face, but I could never put it into words. Eve, you are an inspiration to us all.
A hearty, juicy, slapping DITTO on Steve Martin’s face (make that “Startled, elderly Asian woman with a misshapen honker”), and a bumpin’ & grindin’ AMEN about the damn Kermit interviews in lieu of Gilda clips, but um…
I wfffmrrvie.
Ahem.
I… watchmmmmvie.
OK.
I WATCHED THE MOVIE.
It sucked ass. And it’s somehow just NOT convincing to hear Jamie Gertz making a big deal about how ugly she is (not to mention the improbability of a completely mundane-looking “Gene Wilder”).
I just ended up feeling really sorry for her dog.
And what was with the horrible toupees on “Chevy Chase”, “Dan Aykroyd” (sp?) and “Bill Murray” (not to mention the improbability of a completely mundane-looking Lorraine Newman)?
I guess the only way to approximate the awfulness that was 1970s hair was to plop heinous toupees on the actors. I flicked between “Frontier House” and the Gilda movie, so I really got pop-culture whiplash.
Steve Martin used to be—in my opinion, anyway—a very good-looking man! Why did he DO that to himself?! I thought he was a hotshot intellectual “New Yorker” type, who was above that sort of thing. I’d forgotten his L.A. roots.
And dammit, I wanted more Roseanne Rosannadanna—and not just from her awful 1980 B’way show, but from SNL! And why did they tell us all ABOUT Rhinda Weiss’ song about saccharine, then never SHOW it?! Joiks. Guess I’m gonna have to shell out for a “Best of Gilda” tape.
and while we’re on the subject, just who in the world gives a shit what Molly Shannon thinks about anything, let alone what she thinks about Gilda?
I got really quite annoyed at the ‘preamble’ bits before the clips, there’s Molly, briefly mentioning a Gildism, then quickly getting back to what 's really important, how Molly felt about it, all the way to “gee, Gilda had to share a dressing room with Jane & Lorraine, and I got my own”. :rolleyes:
no, I didn’t bother w/the movie, especially since TV guide did the big article about how they were looking for ‘young unknowns’ for all the roles, then by the way, having Jami Gertz (no where near the 20something Gilda was at the time). Bah.
I did a web search and tried to find Steve Martin’s scary new face, but I think it is of such recent vintage that no photos have yet been taken. Just picture a “Steve Martin Beanie Baby,” and you’ll pretty much have it.
Oh, yes, and Mollie Shannon did annoy the living beans out of me, too. When she got all teary-eyed and broken-voiced at the end? Was that supposed to be, ummm, “acting?”
That clip show was a waste of time indeed. But it did have one beneficial effect – I was so ticked off about the crappy seven-second clips that I was catalyzed to find out if anyone was showing SNL reruns from the early (read: good) years. I found out that E! shows them every weekday at 7:00!
Oh, thank you all for reassuring me that I was not the only one who thought “yeaaaaaaaaagggggh” when Steve Martin’s face filled my TV screen!
When my grandmother died, they had an open casket and I swear, the same make-up artist who dolled up Grandma was at work on Mr. Martin.
I watched bits of the TV movie while channel surfing. On a positive note, some of the actors immitating the SNL performers of yore, did really good jobs with the voices (the guys who played Bill Murray and Gene Wilder sounded great). Mind you, if I’d listened to any of the actualperformers more recently, I’d probably have a different opinion altogether.
The most annoying thing for me (in the TV movie): The short recreations of the Gilda Radner sketches made them seem so lame and unfunny that I found them pathetic and embarassing. The shots of the fake audience laughing at them made it worse.
Jami Gertz is pretty much the kiss of death. “The Lost Boys” is, I believe, the only watchable movie she has ever been in, and that’s largely because it’s kind of a goofy movie anyway. Jesus … “The Lost Boys” was able to absorb the presence of Gertz, Corey Feldman AND Corey Haim and still be OK. How did that happen?